As a father, husband, teacher, coach, man, writer, jack Lutheran, late-mid-life-elder, ne'er do well, and espresso addict I find myself tethered to more responsibility, commitment, and distraction than, as a younger man, I thought I would carry. So I write this wonderfully encumbered surprise of a life that I have been given. I see grace and I see atrocity; I respond writing odes to what I love and rants against what I abhor. If I lived in a cave I would paint these on the wall.

Wednesday, February 15, 2017

Stretching

Life, it has seemed, asks a lot of me. I need to make a living, pay bills, fix cars, plunge toilets, rally against the steady entropy of my material world. My planner is flush with tasks and commitments, most of which I did not choose as much as agree to. But, lately, the teeter totter of being has pivoted to another view. I catch myself turning the table to ask more out of life -- more enjoyment, more satisfaction, more joy. And, slowly, I am becoming more responsible for cultivating my moments in order to fit those pieces in. I, in other words, am stretching the narrow window of my mind so that time night be filled with more of what I want out of these precious days here on planet Earth. As I walk across campus, the sun shimmers of a palm leaf that dances on the stiff breeze. If I let myself give in to all the chit chat of a mind bent on worry, I might miss that, might skip the gift of this second, might limit a full dose of free range, of listening to the silent nothing of the right note.

About Me

Poems and narrative essays function in ways other kinds of writing cannot. They are living things that raise the heart rate while raising questions. Not all delight, but most can kick. I toss these out there into the cyber ethers, the e-oceans, with hope that they are found and heard by someone somewhere.